“Voice” by Italian-Japanese hip-hop artist, Ai (Japanese), a beautiful song as a call for more acceptance and love in a diverse world.
“Yuve Yuve Yu” by Mongolian rock group, The HU, about the state of Mongolians in modern society having lost connection with their roots.
“Jee Veerey” by Indian metal group, Bloodywood (English and Punjabi), is a call to the listener not to give in to depression and self-termination.
There’s a Japanese rock band who became famous after aging, Ningen Isu, whose songs are often about classic Japanese and western literature. They’re style is older, and they sing with a very local Tsugaru dialect.
Also highly recommend BUCK-TICK if you can find them. They’re legends of Japan’s visual kei scene, and their style has adapted over the three decades they were most active. I’m not sure, but I suspect as their work is older and under a large label, the licenses don’t allow for much streaming distribution.
Oh, I’ve created a «Jewish Jam» playlist recently, so I’ll share it with you (Songs are mostly in Yiddish, sometimes with a bit of Russian or Ukrainian and one in Hebrew; the order is more or less chronological so that we walk through history; repetitions are also for walk-through-history purposes):
• Then we can transition to Polish with Ty pojdziesz gora – M. Krupowies https://youtu.be/eUVPezEAOWw
Another Polish song is Jeszcze Raz Vabank – Henrik Kuzniak https://youtu.be/cX2nbYYW1uk
Then you can listen to whole Vabank soundtrack. But my Polish playlist is not ready, so that’s it.
I had the unusual experience of recognizing a song in Japanese that I’d originally heard in English ages ago, but I learned very quickly that the Japanese was actually the original!
I thought this would end up being a great learning opportunity; surely, I could use the translation to study the original Japanese, right? Unfortunately, it seems only the melody was brought over. The words and meaning (not to mention the politics behind the original writing of the song) were completely lost in English song “Sukiyaki” by A Taste of Honey.
Hallo Sarah, thank you for the super recommendations! I especially like AnnenMayKantereit with the raspy voice, they somehow remind me of Mumford and Sons. Also loving the 2000s rock vibe from Madsen, it is my current mood on spotify! These will definitely help me discovering more good music and improving my German
I really like the song Sjå attende by Gåte: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpJXLfOk0Lk
They’re a Norwegian band and while my Norwegian is ok, I can’t really understand what they’re saying. They’re singing either in a dialect or an older version of Norwegian. I’ve never really been able to figure that out. Song’s catchy, though.
Russian: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jn1kng-nFuY
This song искала by Земфира was recommended to me when I was still studying Russian, years ago, and it has stuck with me ever since.
